


a park somewhere in chicago

by voidlightCalliope



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Angst, F/M, Gen, Heavy Angst, Mental Health Issues, Night Terrors, Time Loop
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-12
Updated: 2020-06-12
Packaged: 2021-03-03 21:22:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,398
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24672274
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/voidlightCalliope/pseuds/voidlightCalliope
Summary: the kind of song that makes you feel like a broken record when you listen to it.
Relationships: Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir/Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug
Comments: 4
Kudos: 31





	a park somewhere in chicago

**Author's Note:**

> you get a cookie if you know what song this fanfic is referencing.
> 
> another cookie if you comment.
> 
> if you’re allergic to cookies, I have substitutions.

The summer that year was a cruel one.

From the city to the countryside of France, the emerald edged skies sat heavy on the sallow horizon. The sultry, humid aroma in the air was oppressively cloying, like fumes of burnt sugar on the sweating breeze. The leaves burned golden in the arid sunshine, the blossoms that once hung on their branches left to make perfume for brown fields of grass. The hot exhaust of cars painted the sidewalks black and made the already uncomfortable gusts that crept over the goosebump-addled skin even more unbearable with the tiny particles of soot. 

Marinette sat alone on the edge of a shoreline. The silver water was shaded, but not even shade could resist the wrath of the heat for long - the cattails were dusty to the touch, algae stuck thick, grotesquely verdant and sludge-like to the wobbling surface of the river. She studied the rocks at the bottom of the sandy bed - they were red and orange, tiny sparkling bits of jasper and ruby. She tossed a pebble in. The ripples released themselves outwards slowly, with a soft echo of dead silence.

“Marinette!” 

Marinette forced her gaze onto the river. 

“You’re not going to talk to anyone?” Alya’s voice was almost perfect. Almost, “Hey, I’m talking to you! Marinette. Earth to Marinette. Hello? What, are you just going to give me the silent treatment? That’s so childish. Marinette-”

(there was no truth here, in the snarl of Alya’s lip and the treachery of her furrowed brow, but that wasn’t to say there was no trickery and no mirage - the heat bent, but didn’t build - and still, even though it faded, it still stung, still made Marinette want to say, _I’m sorry, but I can’t, I can’t do it Alya, you have to understand.)_

“You’re so annoying sometimes.”

The sun shone, drawing rivers of sweat down Marinette’s pallid face.

“I can’t believe why I even bother with you when you get like this.”

It’s not her.

“You’re just...so...useless. Totally hopeless. I can’t fucking stand you, Marinette. You’re a waste of my time. You’re weird and obnoxious. You always bother me - like a gnat. You’re always flying around me, begging for me to be friends with you. Don’t you get it? I just felt bad for you. But now I see why you don’t have any friends. You’re nothing. If you were really Ladybug, I’d kill myself. God - I don’t even want to think about it.”

It’s just a trick. It’s not her.

Still, her tear ducts ached: Marinette bit her tongue to will her sobs back.

“Well, you should be happy. I’m leaving. Have it your way, girl.” Her footsteps were half-there like they usually were, like the careful padding of a fox, as she walked away - and Marinette was alone, again.

Dragonflies and water spiders skidded across the sky and stream - jewel-bright wings, spindly limbs and flitting dances of movement. Marinette swallowed hard, chewing on unshed tears and tossed another pebble in.

It was a cruel summer. It was the 4th of July.  
  


The ripples were faster this time, but only slightly so. They arched and crept along the still waters, wobbling rings all the same distance apart with uncanny precision of nature. The third pebble - a half fossil-stained thing, with dirt stuck to the bottom - fell like the first and made no sound.

“You’re not going to talk to anyone?” And Nino’s voice was perfect. The inflections rose and fell with the excellence of a concerto, “But, dude, we’ve all been waiting for you.”

“Alya said she’s really bummed you won’t come out with us,” He was going to be more persistent, that was doubtless. Marinette could see the bright colors of his clothes out of the corner of her eye, but they were muted, too dull to be the real thing, “and I know you’re not one for big crowds, but it’s just us and I bet you’d really have a good time, dude, if you just joined us.”

If she spoke, she’d fall. If she spoke, she’d fall for it. She sealed her mouth and tossed the fourth. Bloop. It was easy to imagine: her vocal cords, the crisp strings of a well-tuned violin, used to play a symphony of well-intentioned manipulation - Nino was speaking still - 

“...Maybe you should just try. It’s just in your head, right? It’s not real.” Nino said, sounding deflated, as if Marinette had popped his heart (but his heart was a balloon - a cheap, shiny thing filled up with too much helium, pushed past it’s elastic limits, but still refusing to break) with a pin, “If you just...tried, it would be fine. You just have to try. You just have to want it.”

The fifth, the sixth, a song that went mostly like this: _Splash, splash, silence._

“You can’t say we didn’t try, dude,” Nino ended bitterly, but mostly disappointed, the brim of his hat pulled down over his eyes, a sigh trying to escape from the pit of his stomach, “you can’t say we didn’t try to make you better.”

And with the seventh (which was a coral colored stone, with flecks of burgundy and sulfuric yellow) he was gone, leaving impressions in the wilting grass, kicking up pale dandelion fluff into the wind.

Marinette studied the eighth. It was cold like ice in the palm of her hand, smooth like glass and rounded on all its glistening edges. 

“You’re not going to talk to anyone?” Twin voices, high and low, tall and short, “Marinette, honey, you should go and talk to your friends.”

They were always the hardest to get to leave. They stayed, they begged, they cried, they pled, they wept, they bargained, they questioned, they mourned, they bothered, they pestered - Marinette took the eight into her hand like an icicle and didn’t turn her head (their eyes were perfect - the faces were too doughy, the skin too muddled, the hands too coiled and hair too dry - but their eyes were perfect, and their eyes said: _Marinette, our darling daughter, we love you so much, but you have to quit this…!)_

She threw the stone and bit down on a sob as she heard the screams of shock - and the rain of crimson drops, that landed on her skin and itched like sores filled with pus, that itched so bad Marinette thought about ripping her skin off just to make it stop. The dragonflies buzzed solemnly. The water spiders were turning a sickly black color, pin-legs buckling and skittering depesartely. The scent of blood was making them curl up onto themselves, the delirium of it all making the cicadas scream and the ants thrash.

Marinette tossed the ninth, the tenth, the seventeenth, the hundredth, the nine-thousandth in angry handfuls. 

The water never broke. No sound ever erupted from the geysers of foam that cascaded up from each foolishly flung rock. She dropped her head to the grass. She could hear her heart beating, with her chest tucked up to her chin, but the familiar thrum was off, only by a whisper of a second, but still off - and it was unbearable -

There was a rustle of ferns and bushes. 

Marinette felt sweat slide down the bridge of her nose, as she gulped down tears helplessly, legs shaking. When the music of the guitar started, Marinette resisted the urge to scream, fingers scraping over the soggy side of the shore, her nails digging into the start of the muddy bank. The sun-stinking sweat dripped down faster, rolling down the dirt in lazy streams of saltwater.  
  


Such beautiful, horrible music. Marinette dug her fingers in deeper, as if trying to draw blood out of the callous soil.

“Marinette? What are you doing here?” Luka asked, tone careful, blue-dyed strands of hair gaudy azure streamers that burnt lines into Marinette’s peripheral vision. She dug deeper and deeper - as Luka treaded closer.

It was a cruel summer, she knew that. But it still ached. It still made her sick to her stomach. The sunlight bubbled the water into hazy steam. Luka laid a gentle, searing hand on her shoulder and pressed in, shifting the fabric of her shirt (like grinding sandpaper across her bare skin) back and forth in what was meant to be a gesture of comfort.

“...Do you feel okay? Do you need help? Is there something wrong with you?” Luka asked, but his damn voice was all wrong. Marinette chewed on the screams resting on her tongue, “...If there is, you know you can tell me, right? I don’t want to see you hurt.”

Marinette shoved her face into the water and breathed in deep. She could hear Luka screaming, but his hands were too far away to reach her - as the burn of dirty water traveled down her throat, into her stomach, into her lungs, liquid fire melting her insides as her hair stuck to her face like strands of liquorice-colored seaweed - the burn became an inferno as she resisted her natural urge to pull her head out of the grime, but she forced it down further, until the edges of her vision started to turn black -

“Marinette, let me help you!”

Until he was too far away to even dream of touching her - until his music disappeared along with everything else, the world shifted and turned black and Marinette almost screamed with joy-

It was a cruel summer.

Marinette laid on the grass and cried, hugging herself tightly. Alya was coming, she knew that, but it didn’t matter, it didn’t matter-

It was the 4th of July-

(and she lived in fucking Paris)

*

Sometimes it was Chloe, sometimes Kagami. Sometimes it was Ivan, or Nathenaiel. Sometimes it was Max, Master Fu, Lila, the breadmaker who lived a few blocks down from her house, Plagg, a woman she’d seen in a fashion magazine once, an akuma, Tikki, Juleka, Hawkmoth, a man she had never seen before -

The point was: it was one big party and everyone was invited.

The point was: Marinette wanted nothing - nothing to do with it.

The point was: It was the 4th of July and everybody thought they knew everything.

(Well. They didn’t.)

*

  
  


“You’re not going to talk to anyone?” 

How many times had she sat here, tossing rocks into the oblivious waters? Watching as the silver foam broke and splattered, as ripples made crowns of white across the silent cresting drops that splattered upwards with every splash? It was hypnotic, kaleidoscopic. Alya spoke, in her not-really-her voice, yelling at Marinette to fucking grow up already, in a tone she knew Alya didn’t have, with anger that Alya couldn’t muster so quickly.

The rocks dropped like tears from her fingers, leaves from the browning Autumn vine. Alya screamed, grabbing her by the collar - her fingers too long, the nails off-center awkwardly - and spat words at her, tongue flaming with irritation.

The ripples descended, ascended, rose and fell. The rocks muddled and pooled, turned wet and damp, lustered with the shine of the stream, sparkled when the light hit the pallid crystals on top of the river. Alya’s footsteps were too heavy. They made her ears ring like church bells.

Seriously. How long had she been here?

The ripples drooped. The flowers at the shoreline were beginning to wilt ever-so-slightly, sugared numb by the sickly sweet syrup of the pollen drunken honeybees. Alya grabbed her by the shoulders and forced her under, yelling about _how damn hopeless you are, Marinette, why do I even fucking bother-_

*

Chloe stared at her.

“I can’t believe it. You’re really this idiotic. You want to be happy? You want to have fun? You want to feel safe? Then just stop. That’s all you have to do. Just go and stop it all.” She said, “Just stop being so weird. Just stop making problems for yourself. If you just acted normal, you’d be fine. If you just acted normal, people would like you. If you put in effort - If you really tried, everything would be perfect. But you’re lazy. You’re lazy and boring and you don’t really want to change, do you? You want to keep being pathetic and sad forever and forever. You want to live on pity and pats on the back for the rest of your life. You’re just a spineless, careless bitch. You’re only sad because you want to be. If you just fucking tried, you’d be normal. But you’ll never try. It’s almost sad. But don’t forget that it’s your fault anyways. When you die with all your regrets and failures, don’t be surprised when nobody shows up to your funeral. God, I really hate weirdos like you. I hate people who give up. I hate people like that. I hate people who bottle it all up and rather choke to death than just fucking breathe for once. I really hate people like me. I just hate them so much. Don’t you hate them too, Marinette?”

*

It was a cruel summer.

The fog of the sun melted you down to the scraps of your bones, boiled your blood into an orchid-tinged vapor. The akuma had been a young girl, a small girl with too-big eyes and a small smile - a girl that took poorly to the butterfly venom in her veins and the purple electricity that criss-crossed her neurons. 

( _please_ , she said, voice tiny like a grain of rice, _i wanna go home, i want my momma.)_

And Ladybug had reached out, Chat screaming at her that she was out of her mind, come back over here, my lady, with horror thick on his tongue - reached out for that tiny voice and tiny hand as tiny bluebell tears fell down her tiny face, stretched out her fingers to her tiny heart to cradle it - and Hawkmoth had tore his fangs back into her.

_(children are so...disagreeable_. The moth, which flickered, and refused to die. Ladybug dropped the tiny hand and felt the violet haze roll in, the cigarette-smoke of dream gods and lazy psychopomps caught between the giggles of a sobbing little girl. _Don’t you think the same, Ladybug?)_

She was only human. And with the heat bearing down on her, the image of flowering tears rolling down that mauve-stained face (with baby-fat still sticking to the bones and missing teeth black-gapped in the wide mouth) she thought this: _I hope you fucking die, Hawkmoth._

And when he came for her, with his cane pointed out to the river, she lunged for him and grappled him down with her to the bottom of the ocean, eyes open despite the salt. He choked and scrabbled at her skin, dragging gloved hands across her throat, the burn of the water making her gag. Hawkmoth wiggled up towards the surface, but she pulled his pant leg downwards, the fabric stretching with a groan of strings, and then they were deeper, deeper, heading towards the blackest part of the lagoon, together-

( _please, miss Ladybug, don’t hurt him. He just madda’ mistake. I’m sorry that I hurt you. Don’t hurt him, please. I won’t ever be a meanie again, but just don’t hurt him, miss Ladybug-)_

*

The story: reduced to its bare ingredients. Because recipes were how Marinette made sense of things. 

_(But, bugaboo, this just sounds like a really recipe for disaster, don’t you think?)_

  1. She had been caught. 




  1. Chat had tried to save her - but he wasn’t fast enough, wasn’t able to reach out and sacrifice himself instead with that heartbreaking smile and idiotic fucking pun. Why did he always give himself up? Why was it always him? Why did Chat lay back and say, I’ll save you, m’lady, with that smile that broke her heart and never really reached his eyes - Why did Chat sit and wait for her in the rain when he knew she wasn’t going to come - Why the hell did he care so much?




  1. Marinette tossed a rock the color of Chat’s eyes. Green. Green like jade and emeralds. Green like ivy and sweet peas. Green, but oh-so-dull. 




  1. She had been caught - m’lady, watch out - dragged kicking and screaming into the akuma’s endless Groundhog Day from hell. 




  1. How long had she been here, between the trees and the sky and the river? With the 4th of July singing dreadfully - cannonfire and laughter muddled together in a cacophony - behind her ears. How much longer would she be here? She counted - started counting - days ago. Forty clean marks on the back of her wrist.




  1. A marker that laid uncapped (sometimes capped) lathered in a thick patterning of black dots and red sheen. A lucky charm that spat in her face and giggled about it. 




  1. No sign of an end.




  1. It was the 4th of July.




  1. _Chat, please. Please save me. I’m sorry I got caught, I didn’t mean to make you worry, I’m sorry_. Before the ink ran dry, on the back of a soiled napkin from the green-seared sides of a trash can, ketchup and mustard on the sour sides, _just tell me it’ll be okay, because I’m scared - and I need you to help me. I need you to save me. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry._




*

Experienced bakers will sometimes alter a recipe to fit their needs.

Marinette’s soul smelled like sugar - alterations were like the back of her hand (in sewing and sweets) So she wrote her own coda, in blueberry currant and buttercream frosting, the words _I’m sorry, Chat_. written like lace a million times over, tear-stained and desperate.

*

She was an idiot. Only idiots would get caught. She was a fool and idiot and _so, so stupid_. The water reflected her face - a ghastly caricature of swollen flesh and blood-shot eyes. Fish bones stuck to the slime-coated sides of the river, but the stench of death was cloaked by rich butterscotch and cinnamon that clogged the air like a plague. 

It was a cruel summer. It was the 4th of July. 

Marinette’s stomach rolled. The water looked darker everyday. The sky grew paler everyday. The grass wilted. The sun shone less. The voices of her tormentors grew louder, incomprehensible. She tossed a rock into the river.

Glistening fireworks clashed rainbow sparks across the dimming atmosphere. Stars came out and mocked her with their steely white glow, hovering above her head thousands of miles away. Cotton candy, popcorn and wet grass shavings stench stuck to her gums and built nausea like legos in her uneasy stomach. Someone was playing a soft, slow Italian song in the distance, lilting notes hanging on the honeysuckle coated drifts of caramel-candy wind. 

Marinette breathed in deep. The fireworks crumbled into fragrant smoke, dragon-tail trails of glittering foxfire making iridescent smog flood the sticky air.

“You’re not going to talk to anyone?”

Marinette didn’t know the last time she had spoken. Her tongue burned like a sore on her mouth, begging to speak with a fiery lash of syllables and spittle - of - how dare you keep me here you fuckers, let me out right now-

“If you don’t talk, you’ll never get out of here.”

Marinette froze.

“Adrien!” She cried, throat dry. Tears were burning her as they ran down, slicing through her skin like red-hot needles, “Adrien, why are you-?”

“I’m sorry for making you wait so long…”

“No! Don’t apologize.” Marinette yelled, “If you apologize, I’ll kill you.”

Adrien smiled, eyes downcast, “I should have been faster. I should have…”

“You’re here now, aren’t you?” Marinette said, “You’re…” she faded off, “You’re really here…”

Adrien grinned wider.

“You - you, Adrien-” and she was close enough to touch him, to feel the sparks beneath his real skin and hear the laughter that came from his real mouth, “I was so - you have no damn clue. You really did...you really came for me?”

“Of course I did. I made a promise, didn’t I?” He outstretched his hand, “I said I’d save you.”

Marinette reached out.

-and Adrien disappeared.

She stared at where he had been. On the ground laid a familiar black mask, even under all the blood.

Marinette grabbed it - and screamed.

*

“Do you really want to be saved?” Master Fu asked, sitting alongside her as she wept, clutching the mask, begging, not Adrien, please not him, not my friend, not Adrien, “Do you truly want to be saved?”

“Yes!”

“Then why don’t you try? Why do you sit here and cry? I think you don’t want to be saved at all. I think that you believe you deserve this.” Master Fu sighed, looking at the river solemnly, “Well, do you? Do you think you deserve all this?”

“Do I?”

“That’s not for me to decide, Marinette.” Master Fu said, “That’s for you to decide.”

Marinette watched as the wizened old man stumbled away, grey hair like a stream of sullied clouds as they melted into the bubbling hot horizon of the park. Italian music crept through the air again, a lullaby of mellow, maudlin notes.

*

“I love the 4th of July,” the little girl said, standing ankle deep in the river, looking at Marinette with a gap-toothed sort of grin, “do you love it too?”

“No.” Marinette said, “I don’t.”

“I know,” the girl said, wiggling her toes in the muddy bank, tiny minnows flitting and water spiders cackling as they dove away from her, “You really hate it here, don’t you?”

“I do.” Marinette said, holding her middle with cold arms. The girl splashed some more, sending diamond bright water drops into the stinging humidity, then stopped, staring her in the eyes.

“You madda mistake,” the girl said, “but still think you’re a good person. Yeah, you’re a good person. I like you.”

“Can I go home?” Marinette pleaded.

The girl shook her head.

“Not until you’re happy.” She said and Marinette knew, knew that she was stuck, “Do you want to play with me now?”

  
  


*

What kind of fucking akuma wanted you to love yourself?

HAWKMOTH (in his nasal bastard voice) 

I THINK I WILL TORTURE LADYBUG EVEN MORE TODAY, EVEN THOUGH I ALREADY RUIN HER LIFE BY MAKING HER FIGHT CRIME ALL DAMN DAY EVEN THOUGH SHE HAS HOMEWORK AND A SOCIAL LIFE. YES, INSTEAD OF HAVING HER FIGHT MONSTERS AND DEMENTED SUPERVILLANS I WILL BESTOW HER THE GREATEST HORROR OF ALL: TEENAGE ANGST.

LADYBUG (lying on the ground)

Thanks.

*

It was the 4th of July. 

Everyday was the 4th of July.

It was a cruel summer.

It was the most beautiful summer in the world.

The grass was pink like bubblegum, crunched like footsteps in gravel when your fingers passed over it. Music played in the distance - but it was too quiet to understand. The rocks were all gone and the river was dry, the golden-brown dust at the bottom mixed with a fine powder of silver sparkles. Marinette rolled herself over, the low-hanging glossy leaves of the drooping trees brushing her face with a kindly sort of itching graze. Ladybugs crawled on her face, slow, stuttering skip-steps across the skin. Their glowing shells of carapace were icy and smooth. 

She looked up at the lemonade skies and laughed - she laughed till tears rolled down her face.

*

“I’m the greatest person in the world! I’m the happiest person in the world! I’m having so much fun! I love it here! I love myself! I love everyone! I love everything!” Marinette screamed to nobody, “I like myself so much. I like that I’m clumsy! I like that I stutter over my words and trip over the air! I like that I’m so desperate for someone to like me! I like that I always doubt myself! I like that I’m arrogant and loud and ditzy! I like that I push away my friends because I’m selfish! I like that I make fun of Chat when he’s just trying to help! I like that I’m such an awful person! I like that I hate myself so much! I like that I’m just a fucking failure who never does anything right! I like that I’ll never be a hero no matter how hard I try! You hear me? Huh? Do you hear me now? Nobody will ever understand me! I’m just-

“ _Just_ -”

She looked over across the river: on the other side, an almost perfect echo, was Adrien, on his knees, cursing himself.

Marinette looked away and plunged into the water. _Take me home_ , she begged, _take me home and let me help him. He deserves to be helped._

The akuma shrugged, _close enough_ , it said.

*

She had defeated the akuma before falling asleep. The sky above was no longer white. Just a sad midnight purple shade. 

The sun wasn’t out. She woke up on a picnic bench. Destransformed. Face still running with tears.

June 5th, her phone read. She laid her head on the wooden slats and trembled, feeling sick to her stomach.

*

“I know you’re Chat Noir,” Marinette said plainly, rubbing blood off the side of her face

Adrien choked on his drink.

*

“...She’ll be okay. No, she has to be okay. She has to...” Adrien said, “I promised her that I…”

“Don’t worry,” Marinette smiled at Adrien, “I’m sure that Ladybug will be okay. She’s strong, isn’t she? She’ll make it through.”

“I...just...as Chat Noir, I should be able to help her, right?” Adrien said, “I should be able to save her, right? Why can’t I just…?”

Marinette looked away from Adrien. His secret laid heavy in her hands - heavier on her heart. She wanted to say that she knew that Ladybug was okay, that she was strong and would be fine. But it was a lie. It was all lies. She pulled down her sleeve and hid the lines of black ink on her wrist.

“Some people don’t want to be saved,” Marinette said slowly.

“Who doesn’t want to be saved?” Adrien exclaimed.

“Some people don’t deserve to be saved,” Marinette finished, “Some people have to save themselves.” Adrien was silent. Marinette put a hand up to her earrings slowly, “But I think it’s nice you're trying to save people who wouldn’t do the same.”

“And how would you know?” Adrien said, voice small, “How do you know anything, really?”

Marinette smiled. And as she looked at Adrien: scared, unsure, doubtful Adrien, who’s green eyes were just as dull as river rocks, she felt like she was looking at him for the first time.

  
  



End file.
